House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said in an interview late last week that if Republicans win back control of the U.S. House of Representatives, he will use their subpoena power to find out what U.S. intelligence agencies knew about the Hunter Biden laptop before the 2020 election, and what they knew of his foreign activities while his father was vice president.
McCarthy, who made the remarks in an interview with the New York Post, warned that “we will use the subpoena” option if top officials with the intelligence agencies don’t cooperate with Republicans.
The report noted that in the days leading up to the 2020 election, more than 50 former intelligence officials signed a letter claiming that the Hunter Biden laptop story was likely a Russian disinformation campaign.
“You would want to ask these individuals first of all, ‘Would you still sign the letter today, and who asked you to sign the letter and why did you sign the letter, and what information did you have prior?’” McCarthy said. “Why did you feel comfortable — especially with your own reputations — that you would sign that letter? Was it someone from the [Biden] campaign who asked, or was it people in the intel community?”
“I think these questions have to be answered,” McCarthy continued. “You cannot allow an intel community to utilize their name in an improper way without correcting.”
FBI Director Christopher Wray was grilled by Republicans last week over an explosive whistleblower report that accused officials at the bureau of wrongly dismissing potentially incriminating evidence against Hunter Biden during the 2020 election.
“I want to be very careful not to interfere with ongoing personnel matters,” Wray said. “I should say that when I read the letter that describes the kinds of things that you are talking about, I found it deeply troubling.”
“I am going to give [Wray] the benefit of the doubt at this moment in time,” McCarthy said. “We are going to ask the tough questions and if we don’t get the honest answers, there’s consequences.”
The report added that McCarthy said that Republicans have already sent more than 500 preservation letters, which notify entities not to destroy evidence due to upcoming legal proceedings, in anticipation of the investigations they plan to launch.
Earlier this year, former Attorney General William Barr slammed the former U.S. intelligence officials who signed the letter dismissing the Hunter Biden laptop story during the 2020 election.
“They’re political whores,” Barr said bluntly. “And it was wrong for them even to put out a letter because they didn’t know the facts. They had zero information; they did it as a political ploy to help Biden win the election.”